Monday, January 13, 2014

How are you all doing? It's been another good week over here. Lots of the same thing, but I'll see what I can think of to tell you about.

Dinner at the Stevenson's with Lily and her
dad. Lily's dad is the second from the left in the back.

On Tuesday we had dinner over at the Stevenson's house. They had invited all the missionaries in Kichijoji over for dinner the week before, but Elder Fukuchi, Hosoda and I didn't go because we opted to stay behind and run sports night. So, the three of us got to go on Tuesday instead. We invited Lily to go over with us too, and her dad was visiting from China so we told her to bring him too. It was a lot of fun! The Stevensons are a great family, and they helped out so much. Lily had a great time, and her dad was way impressed. After dinner we shared a quick simple message out of the Book of Mormon about charity, and Lily's dad really felt it. We had brought a Chinese Book of Mormon for him that we planned to give him, but before we could tell him that we were giving him the book, he asked if he could keep it. He said that he wanted to take it home with him, and he is going to share the words we had shared with him with all of his friends back home. The rest of the night he kept thumbing through it too. I really hope I can find out what happens at the end of that story.

Elder Hosoda ended up having to go home on Friday. He was struggling with depression and stress, so now he's at home trying to recover. He says he wants to come back and finish when he gets better. I really hope he does. He had a lot of potential as a missionary. It's pretty different not having him around the office anymore. But, life will go on.

The rest of the week until Sunday we were looking for new apartments pretty much all day for a couple of days. That's not too terribly exciting. But, it's going well. Elder Fukuchi has to find 6 new apartments before next transfer because of the increase in the numbers of missionaries coming in. That means he's way busy. Really, really busy. He's keeping up and doing a great job though.

Elder Fernelius and me at the

mochitsuki pounding that mochi.

Sunday there was a new family that came that I had never seen before. After sacrament meeting I talked with them a little bit, and found out that the parents were from Kofu, but their son actually lives in Kichijoji for school. His parents came to visit him and brought him to church while they were at it. I started talking with their boy, Josey (his dad is American), and found out that he doesn't come to church because he works on Sundays. At least, that's what he says. The next day, Monday, was the ward mochitsuki party. I asked Josey if he had time, he said he did, I invited him, and he said he would come. Now today, Monday, we had the mochitsuki party, and Josey came! Found out afterwards that he had to walk for an hour to get to the church. What a guy. He's kinda quiet, but really nice. He just needs friends is all. He walked in, and when I noticed him at the mochitsuki party he was just standing there in the doorway, alone. Nobody said hello, nobody talked with him. It was sad. I went over and showed him in, and talked with him. Elder Call, Elder Fernelius and I were able to get a few members to talk with him too, and he seemed to have a good time. After the mochitsuki party, the missionaries were going to go bowling (since it's p-day) and bring some investigators with us. We invited Josey to go along too, and he just lit up. He had a really good time, and now he's got a solid group of people he feels comfortable with at the church. Now we just need to expand that circle to the members of the ward, because missionaries are always going in and out. It really showed me once more today how much people just need to feel wanted and loved. All we gotta do is just be friends with people, take that extra effort to reach out to them, and we can make a huge difference in their life.

That's about if for now. Looking forward to another interesting week! More later!